


I Carry My Home

by Lunarium



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Maglor Throughout History, POV First Person, Water, the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 11:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: Home is here. Like the sea that could have carried me home, I hold it in my hands.





	I Carry My Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Back to Middle-earth 2018. My prompt was: 
> 
> _Home is here, and familiar things;_  
>  A cup, a wooden bowl, a blanket,  
> Prayer, a gift for the god, and sleep.  
> (And music, says the harp,  
> And music.)  
> (Mary Stewart, “Rest Here, Enchanter”)
> 
>  
> 
> Many thanks to Rox for the quick look-through! :D

The sea-horizon changes over time. The tides rise and eat my first home. It shrouds my birth-home from my eyes. The world became castles and horse-drawn carriages and new armies fighting old wars. 

Then it blazes up. It dwindles and begins anew. 

I see the pyramids crowned proudly beside the Nile, the large stone castles overlooking European rivers, universities crop up like mushrooms dotted along the maps, the skyscrapers of New York City as I admired the Statue of Liberty, craned my neck as I peered up at the Burj Khalifa while I stood by the Dubai Fountain. 

But home is here. I have never left it, that old sea where I once threw the jewel that burned in my hand. 

The old sea still sits beside me, in the morning when I wake, accompanies me in my walks, and greets me back into bed. 

I carried the old sea, my home sea, the ocean that would have taken me back home before the gods raised it to drown the rest of my old world. I carried it in a wooden bowl. A shaman grew pity for my misery and blessed it so the bowl would never dry. Then the water was transferred to an unbreakable glass by one of the last surviving dwarves, a master glassblower whose magic ensured the glass would never break. 

An expert harp maker in Ireland fused the glass ball onto the crown of a harp. 

Whenever I play outside, people stop to listen, to watch. They delight in my appearance, particularly the magnificent antique harp. Young mortal humans pull out their ear plugs in fascination of the old tune, seducing them away from their alliterative rock and hip-hop and dance pop. Its swirling tiny sea within fills them with more interest than their iPhones or _Beats By Dre_. With no Grammy to my name, I captivate and steal the show, on the corner of your city, your town, your village. 

I could command the very buildings behind you to life and shatter your cities like the _kaiju_ films you love to watch between your fingers pressed against your faces, but I am content to just play. Battle has long left my veins. 

And I slip away back to the place I call my residence. It is not my home, but it is also my home, for it too carries remnants of my past. The ghost and memories linger like washed-up scent of the times long past. 

Home is here. The familiar is all around me. Over the threshold of the apartment, I transport thousands of years back to something familiar and more isolated. The table is set for me, the stew awaits me in the slow-cooker. I do not recall when I bought the bowl nor from where, but it has survived slipping from my tired hands many times. It endures like me. But I do not think it is elven-made. 

My bed beckons me. So does my music. 

My songs, on large vinyl records. On fading cassettes, some where the tape has spilled out and tangled beyond my repair, on 8-tracks for which I have long lost the machine to play them, CDs that seem to mightily clutter more than their bulkier ancestors. My fairly new computer now houses the mp3s. My studio is simpler to control and easier to carry, like everything else. 

Home is here. Like the sea that could have carried me home, I hold it in my hands. It is all I have remaining.


End file.
